New details about Christopher Kelly emerge

November 23, 2009

As Christopher Kelly was being treated for a fatal overdose, the political fundraiser who was being pressured to testify against ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich confided to his girlfriend to "tell them they won."

"It's my life," Kelly told Clarissa Flores-Buhelos, according to a police report released today to the Tribune. "Tell them they won, tell them they won."

The report does not specify to whom Kelly was referring. It was one of several new details contained in the 47-page police report released by Country Club Hills, where Kelly took numerous pills before his Sept. 12 death that authorities have ruled a suicide.

Flores-Buhelos described the incident in an interview with police two days after Kelly's death. She said Kelly made the comment after becoming combative when medical personnel at Oak Forest Hospital tried to strap him down before transferring him to Stroger Hospital, according to the report.

The report sheds new light on the hours and days preceding Kelly's death, including his suicide attempt just days earlier following a federal court hearing in which he told reporters his life was over. Previously, authorities said Kelly tried to kill himself that day, Sept. 8, by taking an over-the-counter medication.

The police report states that in addition to the pills, Kelly also dragged a hose connected to his truck's tailpipe into a trailer in a commercial yard that he rented for his roofing company.

Authorities said Kelly used the same trailer a few days later, on Sept. 11, when he took numerous pills before Flores-Buhelos found him in a car parked nearby and took him to Oak Forest Hospital.

The police report also provides more details about whether Kelly took rat poison the night before he died.

Country Club Hills Mayor Dwight Welch previously said Kelly took a combination of pain reliever and rat poison, but a toxicology report from the Cook County medical examiner's office only found pain medications in his system. The office said he overdosed on salicylate, used in such medications as aspirin, and acetaminophen, Tylenol's main ingredient. A toxicology report also showed diphenhydramine, commonly sold as Benadryl.

According to the police report, Kelly told Flores-Buhelos while she was driving him to the hospital that "he had taken aspirin, Tylenol and rat poisoning." Another Kelly friend told police he found empty boxes of rat poison at the scene, but police also found evidence that Kelly had vomited.

The police report also detailed text messages between Flores-Buhelos and Kelly, including a plea for help sent via Kelly's cell phone late Sept. 11. "Come get me asap yard," said one of Kelly's last text messages.